Chrono Compendium
Zenan Plains - Site Discussion => Chrono / Gameplay Casual Discussion => Topic started by: Kiloku on April 08, 2012, 02:04:33 am
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I post this with the risk of being terribly flamed. And I joined just to do this.
Thing is, I wanted to know the opinion of the other fans of Chrono Trigger.
Chrono Cross seems like a bad sequel to me, but I see a HUGE amount of support and love for it around, and I'd like to understand that. I only see negatives with this game, starting with the fact that it throws all the player's actions in Trigger out the window: Lavos is alive (with no good explanation why) as the Time Devourer, Guardia, which you saved in 600AD, fell and everything points to a bleak future.
Also lost from Trigger is the world, itself. The locations simply ceased to exist (or are absurdly different than their Trigger counterparts), and that makes no sense to me.
The characters have mostly disappeared (exceptions being Lucca, Schala and Robo, but Lucca's dead, Schala's imprisoned and Robo became the Prometheus Circuit).
Cross adds new content to the world that conflicts with Trigger (like the new species).
The 45 characters develop badly in comparison to the 7 in Trigger, for obvious reasons.
Time travel has disappeared, instead we have 2 (badly explained) dimensions
And the battle system is incomprehensible.
I can actually see this game's plot as a good plot, but not as CT's sequel, but an independent story set in it's own universe.
I'd really like to understand what's good in this game, mainly storywise, and why it's deserving of the "Chrono" name.
And again, sorry for starting with such a polemic post, but it's something I've been trying to understand, and finally decided to ask the other players about it.
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Chrono Cross was not intended to be a sequel, it is a separate story, in the same world....there is a good explaination for lavos being alive, if you play the game...poore took over guardia, you even here about poore's army in chrono trigger. the location of chrono cross was made over countless centuries by Faith. the terraforming project. all of the things you state can be understood if you just play the game and read the dialouge........most of the stuff can be explained if you read the dialogue script or you could read some of the plot summaries for chrono cross.
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my own recently unshelved RPGMaker fan interquel is likely to get a pounding too...eheh
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I post this with the risk of being terribly flamed. And I joined just to do this.
No problem, opinions are opinions and at least you're well spoken in your text, AND come asking for honest opinions instead of starting some flame war against the game yourself, which is perfectly reasonable :)
Thing is, I wanted to know the opinion of the other fans of Chrono Trigger.
Chrono Cross seems like a bad sequel to me, but I see a HUGE amount of support and love for it around, and I'd like to understand that.
It is a bad sequel but not a bad game, and that is the most important factor in understanding the Chrono fandom as a whole. Or at least, the most important one you seem to be missing.
I only see negatives with this game, starting with the fact that it throws all the player's actions in Trigger out the window: Lavos is alive (with no good explanation why) as the Time Devourer, Guardia, which you saved in 600AD, fell and everything points to a bleak future.
Also lost from Trigger is the world, itself. The locations simply ceased to exist (or are absurdly different than their Trigger counterparts), and that makes no sense to me.
The characters have mostly disappeared (exceptions being Lucca, Schala and Robo, but Lucca's dead, Schala's imprisoned and Robo became the Prometheus Circuit).
I'd like to explain the one reason why all of this is true and use it to justify the choices made in development but there simply isn't one reason. There are several.
First of all, Square Enix pushes developers creating new games to create all new worlds, new characters, and newly coded systems for fear of gamers not wanting to repurchase what they already have. This seems ironic considering the string of remakes/re-releases but it helps to create a unique identity for every game so that no game lives in another's shadow. Obviously with SE being a company their motivations, strategies, and decisions vary over time (and they keep merging with more and more companies) so what I'm saying may not apply for every game. This method of all new content every time works very well for them with some franchises, like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest. Those games are their biggest money-making draws for audiences so it's no wonder they try to replicate the formula for other franchises. However, while they seem to be able to handle the story-telling aspect of more interconnected franchises like Chrono and Kingdom Hearts and the Xeno series, they tend to make fans more angry with those series because of different expectations that come with that kind of story.
The game came out on Playstation in the beginning days of 3d gaming and the developers really wanted to show what could be done with the system. For all accounts, the game is absolutely beautiful. Some say it looks better than some current-gen games because of the aesthetic (and if you run the game on an emulator on a decent PC you can actually get it up to HD resolution looking better than it ever did on PS1). The music is top-knotch (though personally I wish it had slightly less island flare). The battle system is complex and almost totally new and different from other SE games (close to Xenogears but both have nice differences). The amount of information that would have to be stored on a CD no less for all the characters and locations is ridiculous and the way they managed it is a technological marvel (comparable to what was done with CT on a tiny SNES cartridge). The hardware simply isn't the same as SNES and rather than try to use it the same way or make it feel the same, the game was built on the PS1's strengths through and through.
Next, how exactly do you follow up such an epic story that seems to wrap up all the main characters and the entire world's history in a nice package full of closure without walking backwards? You can't, really. To make any sequel to Chrono Trigger, they would have had to invoke a little retroactive continuity, revisit the motivations and expectations of the previous game, and dig up a story based on the ramifications of kids having the ultimate power over time. Their story was already over and the lighthearted fun had already been had. Chrono Cross was doomed to never feel like Chrono Trigger even if it was completely different than what we have as an official release. Again, that's not to say it was doomed to be a bad game, but it would never feel like a conventional sequel. Honestly, having Crono and co have to re-stop some big world threat that wasn't Lavos but somehow bigger and worse (sequelitis) would have been more hokey, more cliche, and probably gotten more fans mad than Cross did. When the developers made Trigger, it was literally their dream game, with people from rival studios working together on what they all said was the most fun game they could think of. When they made Cross, I don't want to say their heart wasn't in it, but it definitely was more business than pleasure.
If you take all the stipulations that came along with the development, the developers were still able to incorporate it into the world of Chrono (Zurvan?) without causing any kind of major plot hole, inconsistencies, or implausibilities. The world in Chrono Cross is a group of islands that are forever sealed off from the outside world (at least during the game) by a storm, so you don't get to go to the mainland continents you're familiar with from CT. Also it was created after the events of CT so it is new and retconned and not retconned all at the same time. Characters and themes that had been explored in Trigger came back in Cross in a few places where they could stick them in. The story for Cross is big and complicated and if it felt like Trigger references were shoehorned in, it was probably because the developers really wanted to do justice to the Chrono name and get those references in there somehow at least.
So yes it is different from Trigger but not to detriment and certainly within reason given the context of its development.
Cross adds new content to the world that conflicts with Trigger (like the new species).
The 45 characters develop badly in comparison to the 7 in Trigger, for obvious reasons.
Time travel has disappeared, instead we have 2 (badly explained) dimensions
And the battle system is incomprehensible.
The new species are explained along with the explanation of the El Nido archipelago (the game's world map area), basically an artificial group of islands in the future had a research building on it called Chronopolis, they popped a hole in time and got sucked into the past. Meanwhile in a timeline where humans died out and reptites evolved instead, there is an identical group of islands with a research building called Dinopolis and it gets sucked back in time and merges with the other islands. So there's weird buildings and creatures and technology and characters who wouldn't be there if the future hadn't been saved in CT and Belthasar hadn't made Chronopolis (and "poked a hole" in time).
The 45 characters are probably the biggest annoyance because early in development they liked the idea that anyone could save the world so they wanted literally any NPC to be recruitable. It seems like they got to 45 and decided "eh that's enough". It's annoying because of the middle ground between a dependable standard group like CT and hundreds and hundreds of possibilities (what they were going for initially) like Suikoden or something. They didn't pick one, they tried to go somewhere in the middle and ultimately failed.
The two dimensions are rather poorly explained initially as simply "in one you're alive and in one you haven't existed for ten years". However, as the game goes on, more differences between the two are explained and the characters that exist in both dimensions are rather interestingly in different predicaments, and the whole thing has a nice "every coin has two sides" sort of message (or "the grass is always greener" if you like). If Chrono Trigger was a time traveling Christmas movie, it would be a Christmas Carol. They go through eras and decide they want to change the future when they see a version they don't like. Chrono Cross would be It's a Wonderful Life, where they see another what things would be like "if things were different". I think the relationship is rather complimentary. This is an opinion acquired over time, though, not what I thought at first.
I can actually see this game's plot as a good plot, but not as CT's sequel, but an independent story set in it's own universe.
I'd really like to understand what's good in this game, mainly storywise, and why it's deserving of the "Chrono" name.
Story-wise, it helps to flesh out the world of the Chronoverse, specifically Belthasar and Schala's stories, while keeping bright and colorful visuals and situations, though it takes the themes and story points to a deeper, darker level than was touched on in Trigger. Cross makes a smaller story seem big by scaling up what would have been a single era's quest in Trigger into what feels like a full world with its own charms and secrets. When it doesn't reference Trigger, it stands on its own two feet proudly and rightly so. When it does reference Trigger, unless you have the mentality of "just give me more more more more MORE!" then it does so respectfully and in a mostly satisfying way. It is more of a spin-off than a sequel but I feel it is deserving of the name with the care taken to not butcher Trigger's storyline just to allow this one to exist, and because the people at the core of development were the same for both games.
And again, sorry for starting with such a polemic post, but it's something I've been trying to understand, and finally decided to ask the other players about it.
I hope I've helped give you some insight on Chrono Cross as a die-hard Trigger fan who's only recently come to fully appreciate what my favorite game's step-sibling has to offer. Any more questions, just ask, I'd be glad to talk about it more.
If you haven't played through Cross, I'd recommend it thoroughly just to find out what the developers intended to happen to the world. If you don't want to play it, there are plenty of walkthroughs and "let's play"s on youtube, so check them out. What have you got to lose? :wink:
EDIT:
A few final thoughts. The things I didn't like before seeing the whole story, which I do like now that I've gotten through the game, are the battle system and the walls of text. Honestly several characters can be bypassed and if you know which ones actually have development then you can have a satisfying playthrough with characters you like, ignoring the ones that are cringe-worthy. Because of this, I don't really have a problem with the characters and see it as a freedom of choice scenario. The battle system angered me at first because it was 50% of Trigger and thus is the biggest difference between the two games. While I felt like they could have gotten actual magic into the game somehow and avoided "Element" confusion when dealing with monsters and robots and things that really have no way of getting elements, the element system's incorporation into the battle system is its saving grace. Chrono Trigger's system was amazing. Everything happened on the map right there, no teleporting, no stock backgrounds, and the teams worked together with their attacks. I really thought (and still think) that RPGs should take more influence from the system today and I have no idea why they still don't (though Xenoblade looks to be in the same vein and that's awesome). However, Chrono Cross's FF/XG combo battle system is similar to Trigger in more ways in the under layers. It's the strategy. The similarities lie in the way that the enemies have certain magic color associations and need to be attacked with opposite colored spells. Obviously there's a little more to it but that's the meat of it, and it really is similar between Trigger and Cross if you overlook the superficial differences. Walls of text that I once despised have since awoken me to the fact that a lot of the exposition is in there and without the walls of text we would probably just not know what happened rather than be given the information in a more coherent way, if the developers were given a chance to revisit those parts.
Honestly I see the two canon Chrono games as two out of three parts. Chrono Cross left a big open ending that could easily lead into another spin-off adventure in which you assure that the world really will be okay despite all the tampering. When looking at the games' stories as a whole, it's simply not whole. Each game is self contained but there is a massive unexplored "ideal" world left over. This is probably the way a lot of people see it, but they don't realize such, so they hold Cross to blame for the lack of a third, story-fulfilling, final Chrono title. I used to blame Cross, but no more. I love Cross. I now blame Square Enix solely for their recent (more than a decade's worth of) idiotic decisions.
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Yea, I don't get it either, Cross made me hang up my katana in shame...Kato-san why did you shit on my fantasies...
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...you annoy me
Hey, none of that now.
To answer Kiloku's question, there are many things deserving of praise in Chrono Cross. The Compendium had a feature once that covered all the strengths and weaknesses of the game. I suggest you read it; I think you'll find it very informative. It can be found here:
http://www.chronocompendium.com/Forums/index.php/topic,2695.msg51335.html#msg51335
Oh, and be sure to read the intro at the top of the page.
Personally, I think the number one reason why people dislike Cross is that they hold expectations from playing Trigger. I may be biased though, as I played Cross before even hearing of Trigger. However, I think it helped me appreciate it more; I had no expectations from the previous game, and when I later played Trigger, it only added to the awe and excitement of the series.
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Thanks a lot, Bekkler, your post made the game much more understandable to me, while I do think of different paths the storyline could have taken (grounds for a fangame, maybe :P)
The story really fits more as a spin-off than a sequel, as you said, but some references and explanations for conflicts seem to have been forcibly jammed into the plotline.
Personally, I think the number one reason why people dislike Cross is that they hold expectations from playing Trigger.
This. I had different expectations, I didn't think it would be the same, but at least that it would be more familiar... And thanks for the link!
By the way, I did try to play Cross once, but I didn't like it's gameplay...
I'm considering the idea of trying again, let's see what comes out of that
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I liked the game until the second disk, because of the way they put all the story elements in your mouth when it was already full after chronopolis. And the final boss was a huge disapointement. I was so disapointed by the ending that the game let a very bad taste after.
After dozen of replays my opinion changed, but these points remain for me :
-45 characters was a bad decision.
-Pathetic number of dual/triple techs, especially considering previous point
-Boss were, for 90% of the time, not challenging at all.
-Story rushed at the end. The fact that Magus was not involved in this game is unforgivable. He dedicated his life searching for Schala, and doesn't even appear once.
-Incredible number of plotholes
+ One of the top soundtrack of all time in a VG
+ Marvelous environments and artistic direction
+ Innovative battle system
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-Story rushed at the end. The fact that Magus was not involved in this game is unforgivable. He dedicated his life searching for Schala, and doesn't even appear once.
since they remade the chrono trigger game for ds, they have kinda made it so they could get away without including Magus, Magus erased his memories because he wasn't going to ever be able to save Schala. He realized this when he tried to fight the dream devourer
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Objectively speaking, CT is better game than Cross.CT doesn't have any significant flaws.I love playing with different characters in CC, but without a doubt I would exchange them for Magus and more scenes like ''campfire confession''.Maybe, there are some other things I would like to be changed.
But after all, I really prefer CC over Trigger.Why?
Story is complicated with confusing timelines and parallel worlds.But, every time I am impressed with story/ideas behind Serge/Kid/Schala/Lavos/Time Devourer/Dragon Gods/Harle/Fate/Lynx etc.Sheer ambition put into story always amazes me.IMO, now story in Chronoverse possess almost limitless potential.
Kid.To put long story short, for me she is best video game character ever.She could easily bear whole games on her shoulders.
El Nido.''Small world map''.Sure, it could be bigger, but somehow this archipelago is magically charming...
Character design.With all respect to Akira Toriyama, I would choose Yuki's work in CC every time.
And music.Oh my God, Cross' music, I am just speechless...
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Objectively speaking, CT is better game than Cross.CT doesn't have any significant flaws.I love playing with different characters in CC, but without a doubt I would exchange them for Magus and more scenes like ''campfire confession''.Maybe, there are some other things I would like to be changed.
But after all, I really prefer CC over Trigger.Why?
Story is complicated with confusing timelines and parallel worlds.But, every time I am impressed with story/ideas behind Serge/Kid/Schala/Lavos/Time Devourer/Dragon Gods/Harle/Fate/Lynx etc.Sheer ambition put into story always amazes me.IMO, now story in Chronoverse possess almost limitless potential.
Kid.To put long story short, for me she is best video game character ever.She could easily bear whole games on her shoulders.
El Nido.''Small world map''.Sure, it could be bigger, but somehow this archipelago is magically charming...
Character design.With all respect to Akira Toriyama, I would choose Yuki's work in CC every time.
And music.Oh my God, Cross' music, I am just speechless...
^like
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Guardia fell in TRIGGER, not in CROSS. Remember that nice Trigger ending FMV with Guardia soldiers being violently murdered?
Don't blame Cross for sh*t Trigger did.
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Guardia fell in TRIGGER, not in CROSS. Remember that nice Trigger ending FMV with Guardia soldiers being violently murdered?
Don't blame Cross for sh*t Trigger did.
That FMV was only added to the PlayStation port of Trigger in preparation for Cross's release shortly afterward so that fans replaying the Trigger port would have a tie-in to Cross. And Cross itself is expanded upon Radical Dreamers, which had suggested Guardia's downfall and Porre's militant rise long before Cross. So if we're gonna point fingers...
"The Frozen Flame... it was kept in a kingdom to the north for centuries,
legend has it...
With its subtle, mysterious power, it allegedly could guide people and
change history, all while somehow remaining elusive to those who sought it,
or so I have heard.
At the time of that kingdom's downfall, it was seized from its resting
place.
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Hmmm, well I guess that does make sense, considering the whole baby Kid thing was there too.
Even so, I don't see how it's a bad thing. So Guardia fell, but it allowed for Porre development. And besides, Chrono Cross hints several times that Guardia has risen again.
Guardia has prospered for a thousand years, and sometimes at the expense of other nations. Does it really come as a surprise that it might fall? And when they added the whole Dalton thing it just made it more awesome in my opinion. He got his little revenge on Crono & co and is probably responsible for the invasion of El Nido.
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Having recently replayed Chrono Cross for the first time in years, I think I now have a better appreciation of what the game got right and what it didn't. I certainly don't fault the developers for what they tried to do, given the technical limitations of the time. Chrono Cross is a tale of unintended consequences, and I'm not sure any game before it really dove into such heady material. It was the kind of story you might see in a hard sci-fi novel. That anyone would even attempt to make that kind of narrative work in a game is a notable accomplishment. (The Squaresoft of old was always pushing the envelope on what a console RPG could do.)
But novels and games are very different story-telling devices, and there is ample evidence in the game that Squaresoft was just in over its head this time. Much of the story of Chrono Cross takes place outside of the moment - meaning you don't see the events happening, but are told about those events in exposition well after the fact. That is a difficult trick to pull off in traditional fiction, let alone a game. Creative writing 101 teaches you that it is always better to show than to tell. Stepping away from the characters to explain matters risks losing the reader who relies on the characters to care about what's going on in the story's world. Chrono Cross did this so much, especially in disc 2, that the characters were completely overshadowed by the plot. This is a stark contrast to Chrono Trigger, where you really never felt disconnected from Crono and co. during their adventure. This was a problem, and I think it's one that might have persisted even if Cross' overly large cast were pared down to a more manageable number.
Still, I think a lot more people would have been satisfied with Cross if it had at least tried to make compelling characters. Instead we have a mute protagonist and 44 other characters who react to things in the game in almost exactly the same way - differentiated only by "accent". That Serge was made a mute is especially mystifying, given that RPGs had been moving away from that stale convention for years. Perhaps that was fitting, seeing that the real star of the game wasn't Serge at all, but rather the plot itself. This would have been okay had the plot been consistent enough to carry the story. It never really reached that plateau. Inconsistencies were abound. First it said that El Nido had been colonized about 100 years ago, then it said that it had been catapulted 10,000 years into the past and that the research staff of Chronopolis were the first colonists. First it said that there had always been two worlds and that FATE had lost contact with Home World after Serge was saved from drowning. Then it said that Serge was the cause of the dimensional split in the first place and that Home World was a false reality. Then there is the question of what really caused the Time Crash. Was it Belthazar? Was it FATE? Was it Serge? Was it Schala in the Darkness Beyond Time, or was it just a Chronopolis experiment that went horribly wrong? The game never really makes it clear (at least not to me), which is paradoxically the game's strongest and weakest aspect. It's thought provoking, and maybe that was the whole idea.
Chrono Trigger is a character-driven story. Chrono Cross is something entirely different. I respect the deep waters Kato dared to tread in his sequel, but character-driven stories will always be superior in my eye.
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I agree. Chrono Cross has some inconsistencies, especially near the end. And the huge plot dump at the end on the beach is just all information that should have been integrated into the game. And Guile should have been written as Magus, as they originally intended.
But despite this I still love Chrono Cross because I can also see the positive side: A varied cast of exotic characters of all kind, despite not very well developed, it's fun to try out every character and see the special dialogue for each one. A great, tropical setting, beautiful graphics, and an amazing story. Even if that story was a bit too ambitious, and I still don't understand it completely, I still love it very much.
And anyway, it's not like Chrono Trigger is without flaws. Especially regarding Ayla. Where every other character experienced some sort of tragedy in their life, which helped them develop and grow, there was none of that for Ayla. And as such that character always came off as sort of bland to me.
It's also not like Chrono Cross was the only one to use the "accent generator" thing. Chrono Trigger did the exact same thing, with the exact same dialogue just said by a different character. The only difference is Chrono Trigger did it to a much lesser extent.
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Hello guys! First-time poster here.
As someone who started out by playing Chrono Cross first (though I'd certainly heard of Trigger's richly-deserved gilded reputation beforehand), and then played Trigger after, I ultimately feel that Cross's greatest fault is not so much that the plot/scenario and tone of the game was bad, but that it was ultimately so far divorced from the plot and tone of Trigger that the feel of the 'series' (or in other words, the overall narrative and motif that fans of CT had come to believe that the Chrono series was all about) was lost in translation. The factors people feel are responsible for this 'disconnect' are numerous and varied (it's a commonly-held opinion that has divided the fanbase, and all who hold it will mention different things as to why), and have been mentioned many times before (on this forum and others); but for me, I feel that the major ones are as follows:
1) The fact that the main protagonist of Cross, Serge, is a completely brand-new character to the Chrono series who not only suffers from the lack of any clear personal motivation or purpose to his journey as we’re trying to invest ourselves in him, but also from the fact that has no clear connections to any member of the main cast of Trigger or it’s story whatsoever. I’ll elaborate on this later on, as I feel it generally encapsulates many(if not all) of these factors into a single product.
2) The noticeable lack of presence of Trigger’s main cast in Cross
3) The notable lack of solid, tangible connections from CT to CC to not only be found and seen in CC, but ultimately FELT, even.
4) A confusing, unevenly paced, and ultimately somewhat disjointed narrative that tends to lack clarity of direction in key areas and ultimately leads to an uncertain (and arguably unsatisfying) resolution
In short, Chrono Cross suffers from a perception problem: players not only generally find CC’s story hard to follow and understand completely as a whole, but due to all the differences between CT and CC, they also find it hard to perceive that the story of CC ‘belongs’ in the same universe as the story of CT. The differences can be anywhere from subtle to absolute opposites: different characters given the same name, the same characters given differences in appearance or motivation, art style, change in tone and content of narrative from light to dark, clear and simply told story as opposed to a complex and non-linear narrative, and so forth.
And ultimately, I feel that the differences from CT to CC, or more to the point, the often-mentioned disconnect between them, are most encapsulated in and by the main character in CC, Serge. Why? I'll explain below, but please bear with me as it's a bit long :)
As I mentioned above, Serge is a brand-new character to the Chrono Series who has no clear connections to either the story of Chrono Trigger or any of its principal characters. He doesn’t know who any of the CT cast is, nor does he even know or even perceive of anything they did in the events of that game. In short, to Serge, the CT cast has had such little impact on his existence that they might as well have never even existed. And even if we expand to the overall story and all the other characters in it, it doesn’t get much better; In fact, Serge’s only real connection to anything in Trigger at all is the one he shares with Schala (a minor, though certainly memorable and beloved, NPC). And even that connection is frankly, quite shaky; it basically amounts to the fact that he happened to be a child who's life Schala chose to save. Nothing more, nothing less. Furthermore, we are only made aware of that 'connection' late in the game (in either Terra Tower or in Opassa Beach before the Time Devourer fight which basically amounts to the same thing really), and even then, we are never told of a specific or even substantial reason as to why that connection came to be (presumably, Schala chose to save Serge out of the goodness of her heart, or whatever remained of it while she was fusing with Lavos to be the TD in the Darkness Beyond Time, but then we are still left with other unanswered questions, such as why Schala chose Serge specifically and so forth). In short, we’re put into the shoes of a 17-year-old boy who we know little-to-nothing about and are asked to invest ourselves in his story and journey for the next 50+ hours we will be playing as him.
Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with this per se; it’s basically the same thing we’re asked to do with almost every main character(s) in any RPG we play. However (and this applies many, many, MANY times over for those who played Trigger before Cross), there is a snag here: generally, we’re asked to do this for characters in brand-new worlds and universes/timelines, so we are absolutely free of any sort of expectations and are free to base our connections/opinions to nothing other than the innate merits of the characters and their overall story. Serge, unfortunately, doesn’t have this benefit, because the greater world/universe Serge lives in is not a brand-new one, it’s one that we’re going back to after having seen it though the eyes of others. Sure, Kato and co. may have tried to minimize the burden Serge (and, indeed Cross) had to bear by having about 98% of the game take place in brand-new areas not present in CT, but ultimately, it doesn’t work for the same reason that expecting a brand-new side-story Chrono game (even if it features a new cast that takes place in times not visited by Crono’s party) to be divorced from the expectations that CT would put on it is utter folly: it cannot escape the fact that it exists as part of the same narrative. Any story in that universe’s myth arc is by nature linked to everything else in it (especially what came BEFORE it), and trying to play down or hide those links not only does not free those stories (and their characters) to be judged on their merits, but furthermore does the opposite: it hinders that story’s (and those characters’) chances of being favorably received or appreciated.
So already, to the people who’ve played CT and/or follow the myth arc as an overall narrative, Serge has to deal with the problem of having to generate interest in himself and his story in an audience that for the most part will be pre-inclined to judge the worth of his character and his story on how it fits into the greater Chrono story already told. As you can imagine, this is not the most favorable of circumstances to be thrown into. Instead of players approaching him saying ‘I don’t know who this guy is, but I’m eager to find out’, he has players saying ‘Who is this guy I’ve never heard of before, and why should I care?’. Really, there’s only one possible way Serge can overcome the position he’s in, the perception players have of him, and the questions it asks of him, and it’s this: To quickly build himself up as a compelling character who not only has a worthy quest to embark on, but clear, logical, and ultimately moving personal reasons that would inspire the player to emotionally invest themselves in his story. Only by being a character with a personal story people both understand and literally can’t help but try and unravel can Serge hope to overcome the weight of expectation players who know CT would have in his story (or at least, overcome them enough to make those players actually care about or appreciate him).
Unfortunately, Serge never really becomes this sort of character until the end of the game (and there are some who would say he never becomes this sort of character at all). And even when he does, his development and importance as a character is instead mostly grounded in his function as a previously-unknown-but-later-revealed key to the plot as opposed to growing into a driving force of said plot through any personal growth or development he had as a character. The overall purpose of his quest is often unclear, and what turns out to be his ultimate objective (saving Schala) is never even referenced until the very end, after numerous twists and turns that render his overall story complicated at best and incomprehensible at worst. In short, his importance to the story ultimately becomes clear, but it’s not so much that we gradually discover it with him through the quest as we play it so much as we suddenly have it told to us near the end of the game, info-dump style. Furthermore, what little connections he has to the CT story and the overall Chrono saga are similarly hidden, and revealed even later, also info-dump style, with little-to-no noticeable impact on his overall story until the very end.
In addition to all of the above, we don’t even really have the benefit of being able to truly put ourselves in Serge’s shoes and mind and either understand him as a character or understand his motivations as to why he does what he does in the story. We are never privy to Serge’s own motivations, goals, dreams, or desires, or what personally drives him to search for the Flame, Lynx, or ultimately, what drives him to risk his very existence in trying to save Schala from the TD in the DBT. We rarely know what he, as an individual wants to get out of the overall CC quest (a quest which he undertakes as a central protagonist) at any given time; and even when we do know, we know precious little other than that he wants to achieve a stated goal, with his feelings on the situation left up in the air to be guessed at by the player. In other words, we as players may have a reason to see how Serge’s story plays out, but it’s like these reasons are more dependent on ourselves as opposed to being inspired through Serge’s own motivations. He is, for the great majority of the game, less the focal point and engine through which we see the story being told in the way it is, and more of a blue-haired male sprite along for the ride as an avatar of ourselves as we discover the story. This lack of insight we have into his character, combined with the sense that Serge is not as effective an engine to the story as his protagonist role would lead us to expect, makes it difficult for us to establish the emotional connection with him that we need to make us truly want to invest ourselves in him and his story, let alone make us care enough to appreciate his ultimate importance to the overall narrative in the Chrono series.
The final result of all this is that Serge’s story culminates in him saving Schala, uniting the divided timelines, and finally saving all of space-time from an entity determined to destroy it from existence. Through his actions, he is the greatest hero of the Chrono series in terms of his deeds and the impact of those deeds on the well-being of the world and universe. But yet, we never feel he achieved all this through the completion of his personal quest; we don’t feel as if any of these deeds started out as goals he was motivated to fulfill on a personal sense, or that they became the culmination of his choices and reactions to the story on a personal scale. Rather, it almost feels like he was a designated hero who happened to be chosen to do them by others, both in-game (Balthazar) and out-of-game (Kato and the creative team), and had little choice but to do so, because that was the role he was ultimately put in the Chrono series to fill. This is ultimately unsatisfying, especially in light of the personal, character-driven plot of CT that came before, which involved a protagonist who grew into his role and a cast of individuals who’s personal motivations were the engine that made the story go.
Does this mean that Serge was a bad character, or that his story was uninteresting, or that CC was overall a bad product because of it? No, in fact I feel that the opposite of all those statements is true. But in light of what came before, does it all mean that he was not quite the type of character with the type of story that would have been best suited to deliver the next chapter in the Chrono myth arc, especially given the role he was called upon to fulfill? In my mind, there is no doubt that the answer is yes. And ultimately, I believe that was the overall problem with Chrono Cross: it was an interesting story with great characters on its own merits, but it ultimately failed at being a good fit as the next story in the Chrono myth arc proper due to a narrative and spiritual disconnect between its story and that of Chrono Trigger. And in that comes the tragedy of it: Kato and his team may have wanted to create a new game free from the shadow of CT, but in placing it in CT’s universe and making it the continuation of the overall story arc begun by CT, their effort was doomed from the start, as CC by its very nature was fated to never truly be free of that shadow and the weight of expectations it bore from having the responsibility of carrying the Chrono name and continuing the story of the series.
Well, I hope that wasn't too long. Thanks for reading :)
Specterace
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Wow, Spec, great post! I think that's a very accurate assessment you have there. The reasons you've listed are reasons why I felt a slight disconnected of Chrono Cross as a sequel (or spiritual successor) to Chrono Trigger. Oh, and Schala was blonde... That, too. I hated that.
But overall I loved Cross for it's own reasons. It's still in my top games of all time, although not as high as Trigger. I think the nostalgia factor also grants Trigger a favorable advantage. I was 10 when I played Chrono Trigger (during the golden era of JRPGS - Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, etc), and was 15 when I played Chrono Cross. The difference in life experience and maturity was also quite different.
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Very well said, Specterace. I think you nailed it.
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Hmm ...I do agree with Specter in that sometimes ...Serge's actions are not explained at all, take coming out of Spriggs House for example ....suddenly everyone in this arc says that their joining Serge to encounter the Flame ....not even Serge at this moment in time had any 'real' knowledge about the Frozen Flame because up until now his main motivation was tracking Lynx, although it can be argued that alot of the characters get caught up in Serge's journey ...most of the time it seems like they are the ones who have clearer goals.
I do however love Cross more than Trigger , something about the Serge/Kid/Harle triangle, makes me appreciate the game more.
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In addition to all of the above, we don’t even really have the benefit of being able to truly put ourselves in Serge’s shoes and mind and either understand him as a character or understand his motivations as to why he does what he does in the story. We are never privy to Serge’s own motivations, goals, dreams, or desires, or what personally drives him to search for the Flame, Lynx, or ultimately, what drives him to risk his very existence in trying to save Schala from the TD in the DBT. We rarely know what he, as an individual wants to get out of the overall CC quest (a quest which he undertakes as a central protagonist) at any given time; and even when we do know, we know precious little other than that he wants to achieve a stated goal, with his feelings on the situation left up in the air to be guessed at by the player. In other words, we as players may have a reason to see how Serge’s story plays out, but it’s like these reasons are more dependent on ourselves as opposed to being inspired through Serge’s own motivations. He is, for the great majority of the game, less the focal point and engine through which we see the story being told in the way it is, and more of a blue-haired male sprite along for the ride as an avatar of ourselves as we discover the story. This lack of insight we have into his character, combined with the sense that Serge is not as effective an engine to the story as his protagonist role would lead us to expect, makes it difficult for us to establish the emotional connection with him that we need to make us truly want to invest ourselves in him and his story, let alone make us care enough to appreciate his ultimate importance to the overall narrative in the Chrono series.
All of the above can be traced to one design decision that ensured that Chrono Cross would never live up to its predecessor, or live up to its own lofty ambitions: Serge didn't speak. If there was one game that needed a speaking protagonist to keep the audience invested, it was this one. Most of the time the player didn't know what the heck was going on, so the "avatar as character" device only served to deepen the player's confusion. Are we supposed to care about Serge just because he is as confused as we are? Or are we supposed to discount his individuality altogether and just use him as a blank slate for ourselves?
But the lack of characterization in Chrono Cross isn't limited to the non-speaking Serge, it also extends to the speaking characters that are supposed to help define him, and that is where Cross really fails compared to Trigger. Thanks to Marle, Lucca, and the other main characters of Trigger, the player feels a solid connection to Crono even though he never says a word in the main quest. In Chrono Cross, the only character that does a passable job of helping us understand the protagonist is Leena, and that's only at the very beginning of the game. After that, Leena is forgotten and the main foil to Serge becomes Kid. Apparently, Serge is supposed to develop an intimate relationship with Kid sometime during the journey, if Serge's dream-sequences about her halfway through the game are any indication. But do we see anything in the actual narrative to make us believe that? No. In fact, there is little indication that they are even friends, much less lovers, even if the player makes all of the "nice" decisions regarding her. And so when Kid is poisoned and she talks with Serge on her deathbed, we are all wondering why there is suddenly a connection between them. Compare this to the lighthearted Crono+Marle moments in Trigger leading up to the climatic "resurrection" scene on Death Peak. We would sooner believe Serge has a relationship with Leena instead of Kid. But because Kid is central to the plot (sort of), Leena is shunted to the DBT, figuratively speaking. In fact, as I alluded to earlier in this thread, the characters in Chrono Cross really aren't very important at all. The characters don't exist for their own sake, they exist only to advance the plot.
Another example of this plot-centric mentality is the role Lynx plays. We come to understand some of his motivations late in the game, but we never really understand his behavior. Lynx is evil and sadistic, judging by his actions in Fort Dragonia and later in the world at large - where several NPC's say that Lynx (in Serge's form) and his minions are attacking people all over El Nido. The question is why? There is no indication that Lynx's melodramatic speech about enmity or his spree of terror had anything to do with FATE's objectives, to say nothing of why he didn't just go straight to Chronopolis to reestablish the connection with the Frozen Flame after taking Serge's form. This tells me that Lynx was never really developed as a character, but rather as a simple device to move Serge from one point of the story to the next, just like Kid.
Apart from these points, I don't think there is anything more to say about Chrono Cross' shortcomings that Specterace hasn't addressed in his brilliant post. Welcome to the Compendium, Ace!
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The thread was supposed to be about why people like the game. When did it switch?
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Sorry, Bekkler. I take no small amount of responsibility for that. I think the thread switched not as a way to start bashing CC, but rather for the sake of being thorough. Your first post pretty well said what Chrono Cross got right, but to really address the initial question required us to dig deeper into what it didn't get right. I guess we went too far in that. Anyway, I don't think any of us hate Chrono Cross. I certainly don't. I'm in the middle of a follow-up playthrough right now, so that should say something.
And I use Serge for my profile picture. :wink:
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Eh, it's probably my own fault for pointing out negatives but I was just being thorough and hopefully balanced. No need to apologize. :wink:
I don't know, I figured there was more people liked about the game than disliked. It seems not, though somehow the whole seems to be more liked than the sum of the parts. If that makes sense, at all, then that's how I'd describe Cross to a new or prospective player.
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Wow, Spec, great post! I think that's a very accurate assessment you have there. The reasons you've listed are reasons why I felt a slight disconnected of Chrono Cross as a sequel (or spiritual successor) to Chrono Trigger. Oh, and Schala was blonde... That, too. I hated that.
But overall I loved Cross for it's own reasons. It's still in my top games of all time, although not as high as Trigger. I think the nostalgia factor also grants Trigger a favorable advantage. I was 10 when I played Chrono Trigger (during the golden era of JRPGS - Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, etc), and was 15 when I played Chrono Cross. The difference in life experience and maturity was also quite different.
People always seem to notice Schala's blonde hair, without noticing her other features that are different. Namely, she's a child. While she was around 16/17 years old in Chrono Trigger, she's around 11/12 in Chrono Cross, maybe even younger. This means that Schala's hair has not just turned blonde, she's also been de-aged. Personally I find this very interesting as the blonde hair seems to be a side-effect of that. And because of that one could speculate the circumstances of the blue hair of the Zeal people. We know it probably comes with birth, because Janus had blue hair at a young age. But perhaps this is not the case for all of them. Perhaps those with higher magic ability are born with blue hair, while those with lesser magic ability get their blue hair later.
Also, I do believe quite a lot of people like Chrono Cross. It is one of few games that received a perfect 10 from GameSpot, something not even Chrono Trigger achieved.
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Heh, I think they intended to change the color. I don't see a problem why they couldn't make it blue, even though the artist changed. Maybe they just wanted to keep the identity as a secret.
At first I thought in SNES era, the small sprites need more significant marks, there are many RPGs with characters who have all kinds of hair colors. But this theory doesn't work because in anims there are still many obnormal hair colors, and there are many blueish haired characters in Chrono Cross, include Serge.
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If they made Schala's hair blue then they'd have to make Kid's hair blue. And then everyone would immediately know Kid is Schala or Schala's clone.
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Hello everyone. This is my first time posting after a long time lurking, so yay.
Chrono Cross is my favorite game of all time. It's a fantastic game, and I think it's truly a masterpiece. I've been playing it again, going on my 4th playthrough now, and I noticed something I've never noticed before: Chrono Cross may not have originally been a sequel to Chrono Trigger. Not even a pseudo sequel. Why would I say such a thing?
Sure, there's no time travel, zooming around in the Epoch, averting the crisis of Lavos, etc. But that's not really what I want to focus on. If you changed the names of the referenced CT characters/places (other than the seemingly hastily added cameos of the CT characters late in the game), would you be able to tell that the characters/places were actually from CT? What would this game be like without the vague CT references?
A boy named Serge struggles against the tides of fate. He becomes wrapped up in the lives of others, and together, they try to change their destinies. The Frozen Flame, a miraculous artifact, has the power to transform reality (Lynx --> Serge, shattering the dragon god, "anything that touches the flame will become a different being", etc). Serge is deceived by the Dragons to destroy FATE, Dragons rise once again to power. Serge and friends push on recklessly to change their destinies and prevent themselves from being controlled by anyone (Lynx, Dragons, FATE, etc).
This game stands on its own, I think. The CT references feel too vague and forced, like they were added after most of the game had already been written. I think it was an attempt to capitalize on CT's success, but they sold themselves short because they already had a great game. The game is all about the struggle against fate (not the computer), and breaking away from having anyone control your life but you. The dialogue in the beginning of the game in Arni Village (Home) pushes this theme very heavily.
I love this game, but not because it has anything to do with CT. CT is also a masterpiece, and it came to a satisfying conclusion. Chrono Cross is more like Radical Dreamers than it is like CT, and I think it should have stayed that way.
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Welcome, and glad to see another Chrono Cross fan. Good first post too; you pose an interesting question.
Does Cross stand on its own without Trigger?
My answer would be no, it does not. The connections are too consequential to the plot. However, those connections, or at least the way in which they are presented do a disservice to the legacy, I think. They could have been implemented better, but I do not think they could be removed entirely, even by changing the names of characters and places. Besides, there is a Lavos is the room that is difficult to ignore: Schala. Who is she? Where did she come from? Why is she here? Without Trigger, players are missing important details that are poorly explained in Cross, if at all.
Radical Dreamers had it right. Subtlety. Cross most assuredly sprouted from Radical Dreamers, so it would have been nice to see some similarities in presentation. As Kato himself explained,
...the connections between Radical Dreamers and Chrono Trigger were intentionally left blurred in the background so that it'd only be recognizable by those who would understand.
Of course, if you are satisfied with Cross's resolution, and its story, that's all that matters.
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:wink:
Perhaps not like those 'sequels' in which the same protagonist beats up new villains, falls in love with another gal, saves the world once again from a new threat, etc. So they a freshly new story which doesn't focus on the quest to save the world(or universe). Although you fight the Time Devour in the end of the game, but the story rarely focuses on that matter.
BTW, I do think Kato was really evil for writing the ending. :twisted: I know there is a multitude of people who want a direct answer to the fate of protagonist and won't buy any equivocal explanation. Perhaps that was why the ending of Final Fantasy VIII also left a lot of arguments, hehe, I really enjoy reading such topics, though I'm usually too lazy to think too deep into the subject.
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Chrono Cross has always been intended as a sequel to Chrono Trigger.
What I wonder is, could you have done any better? What would you have done? Again Chrono & co. trying to save the world from Lavos flying around in the Epoch? So basically a copy of Chrono Trigger with some rehashed graphics and locations?
I think they went the right way about this. I didn't at all care much for Crono. Even though Crono and Serge are both silent, Serge is the more interesting one as he actually has a past and the plot actually involves him a great deal. While with Crono it could have been any other regular Joe, and it wouldn't have mattered. The other characters in Chrono Trigger were better developed then the majority in Cross though. But the battles for one I found more enjoyable in Chrono Cross. People can whine about the Elements all they want, but it did allow you to customize your characters however you wanted.
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there wasn't always two worlds. once the reptites were wiped out by lavos' arrival, that could be a split of dimensions where dinopolis formed instead of chronopolis. in belthesar's time experiment, dinopolis (from way back millions of years) was pulled forward to I think 1000 AD or so, perhaps 900. Chronopolis, several thousand years in the future, was pulled back to this 900-1000 ad time. of course, the two cities fought and chronopolis wins, they create fate and the el nido, some time after people up in zenan began colonizing it themselves (though fate already had people there for some time). so at this point we're back to one dimension, albeit a fugged up one where two cities got pulled toward a middle ground time zone and fought it out. some time later, serge drowns and the dimensions split. after chrono beat lavos, lavos had a back up plan he executed in the darkness beyond time, becoming the time devourer. in both dimensions, lavos is still defeated by chrono, but now it will all be for nothing, as lavos is having his way, and in fact that was just lavos' plan b all along, whether or not chrono and gang defeated lavos is irrelevant, he wins either way. that's the best I can come up with. as for the sowing back together of dimensions, if schala and kid become one person or not (I don't know personally, methinks perhaps in CC but not in RD) is probably a matter of debate as are many other things.
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Although it's not specified in the game, I don't believe Dinopolis was pulled from a point millions of years in the past, but rather from a point around the same time period in a different dimension - or timeline.
I'm still not really sure about the precise sequence of events in Chrono Cross, even after multiple playthroughs. Let me list the things that I know of and try to make sense of it. (in the context of canon as much as possible)
1. In the year 65,000,000 B.C. Lavos crashes into the earth, creating an ice age that causes the extinction of the Reptites - the precursor to the Dragonian race. Despite this event, the Dragonian/Reptite timeline continues in another dimension - one in which Lavos never crashed into the planet. (This suggests that the Lavos event was a temporal anomaly, rather than a destined event, and that the Dragonian timeline was the original history of the world.)
2. In the Dragonian timeline, Reptite civilization evolves in a way that is highly attuned to nature. The Dragonians create Dinopolis at some point and create an artificial plasma life-form (the Dragon God) to help govern the natural energies of the planet.
3. In the Lavos timeline, human civilization is not destroyed by the Reptites and is able to develop freely. At some point humans learn the ways of magic, and the Kingdom of Zeal is founded.
4. Around the year 12,000 B.C., the Zealians discover the power of Lavos slumbering deep under the ocean. An undersea palace is constructed, and Queen Zeal's mind becomes influenced by Lavos. Hoping to harness the incredible energies of Lavos, the Mammon Machine is constructed. Princess Schala is instrumental in the building and/or operation of the device.
5. Time-travelers (Crono and company) come to Zeal in their quest to track Lavos down in their past and destroy it. Their first true encounter with Lavos ends in disaster when the Mammon Machine is activated by Queen Zeal. Schala manages to save the time-travelers, but in so doing becomes a prisoner of Lavos. Knowing that the time-travelers represent an existential threat to itself, Lavos possesses Schala and sends her to the Darkness Beyond Time as a contingency against death. With both Queen Zeal and Schala in its thrall, Lavos then destroys Zeal. Belthazar is sent through a temporal distortion to the year 2300 A.D.
6. Crono and his companions manage to destroy Lavos in their second encounter. With the destruction of its body, Lavos' essence transfers fully into the mind of Schala - in a place where time-travelers cannot easily find her. Schala is driven mad by the contact with the alien consciousness and begins to despair. Schala's brother Janus finds her in the Darkness Beyond Time but is unable to free her. Janus' memory is erased.
7. Instead of a ruined future, Belthazar suddenly finds himself in the highly advanced world of 2300 A.D. after Lavos' body is destroyed. He quickly assumes a position of leadership in the scientific community.
8. Discovering unusual magnetic activity in the barren El Nido archipelago, Belthazar builds a temporal research center called Chronopolis in the Sea of Eden. (The unusual magnetic activity is believed to be caused by the Dragon God, which is located in the same region in the Dragonian timeline.) The facility is powered by the last surviving fragment of Lavos' physical form, the Frozen Flame, which has the power to transcend space/time.
9. Belthazar discovers Schala's fate and perceives that the combined Schala/Lavos lifeform will consume all of space-time if Schala's sanity is not restored. He then conceives a bold and convoluted plan to rescue her: "Project Kid". The plan finalized, Belthazar leaves instructions for the Chronopolis staff and then disappears. (At some point, Belthazar and/or Lucca creates a failsafe to prevent the FATE supercomputer from turning against them in the form of Prometheus. It is not at all clear how much Lucca is read into Belthazar's plan, if at all.)
10. Following the instructions left by Belthazar, temporal experiments continue in Chronopolis for the next 100 years. In the year 2400, the culmination of Chronopolis' research is realized, and scientists attempt a "counter-time experiment". (It is not clear what this means, but it is suggested that its success will enable Chronopolis to control time at will - perhaps indicating an ability to alter the timeline without directly affecting the reality in which Chronopolis exists, thus negating the change.) The safety interlocks on the Frozen Flame are reduced to minimal levels and then all hell breaks loose. The objective of the experiment is not made clear, but what is (somewhat) clear is that the Frozen Flame senses the power of Lavos destroying Zeal in the year 12,000 B.C. and attempts to join with it. The entire Sea of Eden is then encased in a temporal bubble and sent 10,000 years back in time before the Chronopolis staff can shut the experiment down. The sudden temporal shift of such a large area creates a huge temporal distortion that effects not only the dimension of the humans, but the dimension of the Dragonians as well - and even the Darkness Beyond Time, where Schala exists.
11. Due to the massive temporal disturbance in the Sea of Eden, several things happen at once. The Dragonian city of Dinopolis, and the "Dragon God" controlled by it, is ripped out of its home dimension and into the dimension of the humans - and is thrown back in time to the same moment that Chronopolis emerges in. During this transit, the Dragon God briefly crosses into the Darkness Beyond Time and makes contact with the Lavos/Schala entity. This contact momentarily frees Schala's will from Lavos' influence and she suddenly becomes aware of the agonizing cries of a young child through the distortion. Schala then forcibly uses Lavos' transcendent powers to attempt entry into the year 1006 A.D. to save the boy and possibly escape herself. (This action creates a fierce storm in that time-period, which enables Serge to reach Chronopolis and be saved by the Frozen Flame.) Although Serge is saved, Schala is unable to break free from her prison, and she, Lavos, and the Dragon God combine into one wrathful entity called the Time Devourer.
12. The humans of Chronopolis and the Dragonians of Dinopolis at first regard each other with curiosity, but relations quickly break down when the Dragonians determine that the humans originate from a "false reality" and launch an attack on Chronopolis. Due to the power of the Frozen Flame, and in no small part to the unexpected corruption of the Dragon God by Lavos, Chronopolis prevails. Taking the powers of the Dragon God for their own, the humans of Chronopolis conceive a plan to preserve their timeline in spite of their unexpected, and irreversible, backward jaunt through time. The El Nido isles are created over an unknown number of years, and are then colonized by the descendents of the Chronopolis staff under the guidance of the FATE supercomputer. (It is not clear when the colonization takes place, but the year 900 A.D. is suggested.) Special terminals are created to interface with FATE so that the populace and any visitors can be controlled in a way that does not threaten the timeline of 2400 A.D. The Dragon God is then split into six distinct entities and sealed away on the islands. The resulting Dragon Gods retain the memory of their combined form, but are unable to resist the Frozen Flame's ability to confine them. With part of its essence in effect trapped, the Lavos/Schala entity becomes dormant in the Darkness Beyond Time.
13. In the year 1006 A.D. the electromagnetic storm caused by Schala in her attempt to rescue Serge momentarily disables FATE in Chronopolis. This allows Wazuki and Miguel to enter the facility carrying the poisoned Serge. When power is restored to the facility, the Prometheus program, analyzing the situation, briefly assumes control of FATE and guides Wazuki to the Frozen Flame - using the young Serge's retinal scan to establish a new "arbiter" protocol. After Serge is healed and exits the reactor chamber, FATE is effectively cut off from the Frozen Flame and can issue no new commands to it - greatly reducing its ability to respond to changing conditions in El Nido. (And thus threatening its very existence.) Becoming aware of the sudden change, FATE overrides the Prometheus program and attempts to capture Serge with robotic sentinels, but the powerful Miguel is able to hold them back, enabling Wazuki and Serge's escape - but not before Wazuki is infected by nanomachines.
14. Taking advantage of the power loss suffered by Chronopolis, the six Dragon Gods use their combined powers to create an offspring in the form of a human girl, hoping that she can avoid FATE's notice long enough to undermine the computer's mission. This activity by the dragons briefly wakes Schala in the Darkness Beyond Time, who, curious about Serge's fate, stretches out her senses across history.
15. Four years after his escape from Chronopolis, Wazuki is being driven mad by the nanomachines unknowingly injected into him by FATE. His will is steadily eroded until one day FATE is able to take full control of his actions. Angered at the chain of events that caused it to lose control of the Frozen Flame, FATE alters Wazuki's form into that of a feline demi-human; a form that would terrify the "arbiter", Serge. Conceiving a plan to override the arbiter protocol and restore full access to the Flame, FATE decides to simply eliminate Serge. Wazuki is thus transformed into Lynx, and the new living interface for FATE throws the seven-year-old Serge into the sea and leaves him to drown. Seeing this event unfold from the Darkness Beyond Time, Schala uses all of her will to create an offspring of her own, but for the express purpose of preventing Serge's death. She then sends the infant-clone to the year 1005, where it is immediately found by her old friend Lucca Ashtear. Lucca raises the child like a baby sister, but it's not clear just how much she knows about "Kid" or her role in Belthazar's plan.
16. Bringing his override plan to fruition, Lynx tracks down Lucca with the help of his new lieutenant, Harle. His objective is to force Lucca to use her intimate knowledge of Prometheus' core programming to override the lock on the Frozen Flame. It is not entirely clear what happens in the tragedy that unfolds, except that Lynx fails and Lucca doesn't survive. The ten-year-old Kid manages to escape the burning orphanage and swears revenge against Lynx.
17. In the year 1020, shortly after her arrival in El Nido, Kid is suddenly confronted by a strange portal in the water. The portal is a time-gate created by Schala. Compelled to jump through the gate by her genetic twin, Kid is sent ten years back in time where she rescues the seven-year-old Serge from drowning, then is compelled to jump back through the gate where her memory of the event is erased. This action effectively changes history, but because it was initiated in a world where Serge was already dead, that world would have no choice but to continue as it was in order not to create a paradox. A parallel reality is thus created where the rescued Serge is allowed to live and prosper, no one being aware of reality's newfound division. No one but the original FATE.
18. At the moment of Serge's rescue in 1010, a great calamity unfolds in the Sea of Eden in the new reality. Since the reality of Serge's survival did not exist before the year 1010, everything that happened before that time in the original world would have no bearing on the new world's future history. Called the "Armageddon-branch theory", the heroes that saved the original world from Lavos' future destruction could not possibly do so in the new reality since that series of events originated in a year where the new reality didn't yet exist. And since the destruction of the original world was destined without the intervention of the time-travelers who prevented it, the new reality's future was doomed to be destroyed by Lavos, even though this world existed on the same time-axis as the time-travelers who saved the original world. The result of this paradox is a "Time Crash" centered in the Sea of Eden. Chronopolis came from the year 2400 in the world saved from Lavos, but in the new reality the year 2400 was from a world destroyed by Lavos in 1999, so Chronopolis could not possibly exist. This paradox, combined with the giant temporal shift caused by the original world's Chronopolis, causes the space-time continuum to shatter around the Sea of Eden - freezing time in an unrecognizable moment combining aspects of 400 years of history between Lavos' destined day of destruction and the day of Chronopolis' "counter-time experiment". This area is thereafter called "The Dead Sea".
19. Unaware of the Time Crash in his world, Serge lives a remarkably ordinary life up until the day when Kid (in the original world) travels 10 years back in time to save his life. When this moment comes, Serge immediately falls through the dimensional divide while he is at Opassa Beach with Leena. He meets up with Kid later that day. (And from her point of view, she rescued Serge only hours earlier.)
Well, that's how I interpret canon at the beginning of Chrono Cross, with a little supposition.
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That's a pretty neat plot summary, Lennis. Even if you interpreted certain events in your own way, it made me realize there were some possibilities I never considered.
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holy fuck :picardno I never realized it, but you're spot on as to why chronopolis does and does not exist, chrono and gang killed off lavos in 1999 which has yet to happen during the drowning incident, so in at least one dimension lavos still is alive and well. wow that really does suck. Hope schala really really got what she was looking for with serge, can't say I'd be arsed to save a random stranger drowning 13,000 years from my home time, but maybe she didn't realize lavos would still be alive either or at least thought he could be defeated. that's actually a very cool mending of story aspects on kato's part then imo, though a bit of a 'cop out' method to allow him to do pretty damn well anything he wanted to with cross. symbolic of the triviality of life, existentialism, zorastrianism that pops up in the series, especially kato's parts (such as the poyozo in zeal asking about fate). not bad at all
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Lennis, excellent summary! I hadn't even thought of how the Day of Lavos would interact with the Chrono Cross world.
But, for the sake of argument, why Lavos and Schala? Sure, Schala was one of my favorite characters from CT and I was delighted to see her have a major role in this game, but could it be possible for Kid to just be Kid, even without Schala being in the game? I mean, you don't even hear about the time devourer, or Schala, until the end of the game (if my memory serves me correctly). Couldn't that have just been tacked on to tie the game to Chrono Trigger? What if the final boss was the Dragon God? It feels like a disservice to Harle, where throughout the story, she's portrayed as a tragic character, worlds apart from everyone else, when suddenly, there's a new final boss in town. What was the point of having her become such a major part of the story when they were just going to push her out of the way for Lavos?
On the flip side, it really ties Chrono Trigger, Radical Dreamers, and Chrono Cross together to have a game about severing the humans' final tie to Lavos: Schala. It was something Chrono Trigger was missing, and was a critical part of the story (especially after the DS re-release event with the Dream Devourer!). In fact, I'm glad that was retconned (in a sense) in the DS release; I think it completes Chrono Cross and gives it much more meaning to have Schala there. I think that may have been done to have Chrono Cross make more sense.
I guess you can say that the Chrono Trigger team took a flight through time on the Epoch to correct the inconsistencies of the series!
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I'm under the impression that Schala intentionally caused the storm to allow Serge access to Chronopolis and the Frozen Flame. Serge became the 'Arbiter' to the flame, and I think that his real role in history - as an agent of the Frozen Flame - is more sinister than we ever actually see. At one point Lynx knowingly refers to him as the "Assassin of Time" - I think the two events are someone inter-related.
Of course, it's theory, but... I believe that had the Chrono Cross not been used to reunify the timelines, then Serge would have played some role in destroying space-time. Only by freeing Schala and allowing her to create a third, "ideal" timeline (in which the events of Chrono Cross never occur) does she prevent this from happening.
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A much more detailed analysis of the Dead Sea, the Time Crash, and Serge's relation to them can be found here. It's where I got the "Armageddon-branch theory" from.
http://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Salt_for_the_Dead_Sea.html
I'm under the impression that Schala intentionally caused the storm to allow Serge access to Chronopolis and the Frozen Flame. Serge became the 'Arbiter' to the flame, and I think that his real role in history - as an agent of the Frozen Flame - is more sinister than we ever actually see. At one point Lynx knowingly refers to him as the "Assassin of Time" - I think the two events are someone inter-related.
Of course, it's theory, but... I believe that had the Chrono Cross not been used to reunify the timelines, then Serge would have played some role in destroying space-time. Only by freeing Schala and allowing her to create a third, "ideal" timeline (in which the events of Chrono Cross never occur) does she prevent this from happening.
I am also of this opinion, but I think Lynx refers to Serge as the "assassin of time" not because of what he is going to do, but because of what he has already done by just being alive. Indeed, I believe the world of the two dimensions may be doomed even without the presence of the Time Devourer. The fabric of reality was greatly strained when Chronopolis executed their "counter-time experiment", and it may have been permanently damaged when the Time Crash occurred 10,000 years later. I would theorize that this divided reality could continue to exist up until the year 1999, when Lavos is destined to destroy Home World. The dimensions would then become so radically different that reality would completely break down and essentially trigger a Time Crash everywhere. It seems likely that the only way to salvage things is for Schala to remake the world.
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Until Kato states otherwise, I refuse to believe that helping Serge was Schala's motive when she created Kid.
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I always thought that it was stated in-game that that was the case... Then again, that may just be popular opinion. I haven't played Chrono Cross since, what, 2002? 2003? I played it again in 2007 but stopped playing when I moved (I was at Chronopolis when I stopped playing).
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Here is part of the actual quote from Ghost Lucca explaining Schala's actions:
"Led by the pitiful crying the young Serge made as the panther demon's poison took hold of him... Princess Schala traveled 10,000 years in time to try and make contact with this dimension! This caused a raging magnetic storm that resulted in FATE's system malfunction, which led Serge to the Frozen Flame. Yes, Serge... The sound of your crying touched the heart of Princess Schala... Before the destructive mind-set could become dominant, she cloned herself and sent her copy into this dimension."
While it doesn't definitively say that Serge was the reason for Kid's creation, the way this quote is structured makes it far more likely than not. And no other explanation is given, so...
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The weird thing is, Schala cloned herself, which sounds ultimately complicated. The clone's materiality is undoubtable, if someone who is slipping into DBT can make materially contact with the outerworld, it must be blasphemously powerful, making me wonder what else it can't do.
Despite that, it sounds like Schala's another half of mind decided to make a backup.
BTW, I'm feeling the topic has been led away again, hehe.
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I hated the story line of CC. I wish they had explored more character backstories. But that's what fanfiction is for, right?
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Crono was a weakass...just sayin'...fucking ass hole...
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Although it's not specified in the game, I don't believe Dinopolis was pulled from a point millions of years in the past, but rather from a point around the same time period in a different dimension - or timeline.
I'm still not really sure about the precise sequence of events in Chrono Cross, even after multiple playthroughs. Let me list the things that I know of and try to make sense of it. (in the context of canon as much as possible)
[snip]
Well, that's how I interpret canon at the beginning of Chrono Cross, with a little supposition.
But wait. I'm confused on something... every time I feel like I grasp it, it leaves my reach again.
So basically, after all that, the reason the world split in twain is because Serge was saved by Kid, yes? It's because she time traveled to save him. If the reason why Crono and crew's actions were undone in Home World because the world had to go perfectly, down to the T, then this means Serge's becoming the arbiter was always meant to happen.
But Wazuki and Miguel wouldn't have ended up at Chronopolis without Schala's intervention, right? That was always meant to be too then. But if that part of Schala's intervention was always meant to be, what about Kid's existence and her saving Serge? Was the entirety of Chrono Cross meant to be, then? Is 2400 A.D. in a recursive loop of screwing up the dimensions? How does the true ending work, then? Schala is freed and Serge is sent back to Leena on Opassa Beach in the combined, ideal world. Serge couldn't have been saved by Kid, Lynx is still alive, Chronopolis is still in the Sea of Eden, and Porre may still attempt to invade Termina.
And if altering Serge's fate via time travel is what started this mess to begin with, then what about when Serge time travels and saves the kids in the burning orphanage? Wouldn't that create a third dimension? Or is that all in Kid's mind? Since playing Chrono Trigger, I've been under the impression that he actually went back to the point of Lynx and Harle's assault for a short while.
I have a feeling that my main points, Wazuki and Miguel in Chronopolis not affecting anything, but later Serge being saved by Kid does, is because of FATE being down during the electromagnetic storm during the first event, but being perfectly online during the second. Or am I wrong? I think about that, and then I think "Well that's obvious," but then my brain tells me, "Well then if Wazuki and Miguel weren't meant to be at Chronopolis but FATE worked with what it had, wouldn't the storm have screwed with the timeline?" And now I'm thinking, "No, of course not, because FATE was offline."
Oh, wait! That's right, Schala wasn't time traveling during the storm! For some reason I always forget and my mind tells me Time's Eclipse is at the end of time instead of existing at all points of it. She was just trying to enter one of the many points of time she and Lavos had access to. Kid's time traveling actually messed with the timeline. But this implies that Serge didn't actually do anything when he saved Kid... But then why the heck did he (Or Masa, Mune, and Doreen) need the Time Egg to do it? Hmm. Maybe the Planet was just like, "*sigh* Okay, **** it. You already messed with it once and she is kind of instrumental to this whole thing, so why the hell not. Go for it, kiddo."
I never thought I'd have this many questions about Chrono Cross... or that I'd answer them myself. :lol: Even though this post is kind of useless now, somehow I think actually hitting the "post" button will make me remember the answer I reached.
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I agree with Kiloku. As I said in the other thread:
My biggest problem with Chrono Cross is that it seems to make a point of pushing Chrono Trigger aside instead of building on it or transforming it. It's like, screw you old game, this is the new one! From killing off/neutralizing CT cast members; to a new, undead, more powerful Lavos; smashing Guardia Kingdom when it seemed to be at the height of prosperity; the timeline getting cut to ribbons, and so on. It basically makes a World of Ruin out of the Chrono Trigger world, and negates much of what CTs plot accomplished.
I personally believe that Chrono Cross was made into a sequel in order to cash in on CT's success. It is its own game in many ways, and would've been better off without having to link itself to a mostly unrelated mythos.
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Well, i speak in the name of all other players what never played chrono trigger: Chrono Cross is AWESOME!
Maybe thats the reason, i played Chrono Cross without expectations, i dont know too much about crono, lucca and the others, but i understand the game yet.
I would wish chrono trigger with the same graphics quality, to be completely objetive, because i love Chrono Cross in many ways, but graphics and music are unique in that game, and have a huge weight in my judgment. A exquisite playable art. (Shadow of the Colossus are another example of game/true art what i can remember and enjoyed in the same way)
The argument is great (for being a game), and i disagree what you mention about the characters. I think the game is depth with the characters who must do, the others add replay value, fun, and credibility to the game.
I no encounter negatives in Chrono Cross, maybe cause never played Trigger, but i think Chrono Cross only can disapointed they purists of Trigger. (Maybe like Tolkien's books fans, when they seen Arwen instead Glorfindel in Lord Of The Rings Movie, they ask for Peter Jackson's head. all those who never read the book before, fell in love with Arwen and cant imagine another character in the scene.
Sorry if i speak wrong, i speak spanish. :picardno